Going Commando

There was a time in the early-2000s when many people thought guitar music was dead. A stupid idea to be sure, but it was out there. Then came along the boom of the New York scene spearheaded by the likes of The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and those same pundits boasted about a New Age of rock. Again, a silly concept, but it helped to bring light to a bunch of bands that were doing their thing surreptitiously and spewed them forth on the global stage. New Zealand rockers The Datsuns were at the forefront of this “movement”, with that obligatory Next Big Thing label stamped across their denim jackets. As with all sudden flares in fashionable interests, the love died away as the focus went on the next new thing, and many bands moved with the times or dwindled away. Ten years later though, the quartet are launching their fifth record, Death Rattle Boogie, and despite being scattered all over the world – whilst Phil Somervell and Ben Cole remain in New Zealand, Dolf de Borst resides in Sweden and Christian Livingstone is based in London – it's business as usual.

“It's kinda nuts actually, trying to keep it all together,” de Borst concedes. “The time we do have together we have to really get a lot of work done. If we're in New Zealand for a couple of weeks for a tour, we spend as much of our time writing songs or rehearsing. We don't have a permanent rehearsal space so it's always kinda makeshift, with whatever gear is lying around, but it adds a sense of urgency. It also allows time to sit on things, working out how to do this, or we can do this, then go in and work it out pretty fast, which is pretty good.”

With the advent of technology making accessibility an instant commodity, bands can put ideas together over great distances – if that's how they roll.

“You'd think it probably would [make things easier], and we've tried that at times; everybody has Garageband so that everyone has different files or you can add this or this, but we've found it so tedious,” de Borst admits. “The back and forth process doesn't work for us; we seem to get more done when in the same room, we can write something concrete. In the time it takes to play something as opposed to the months of back and forth adding tracks, we're just not that type of band. We're much better at being immediate.”

Four years since last LP Head Stunts, Death Rattle Boogie may have taken a while to come together, but de Borst believes the separation has allowed them to focus their energy more wholeheartedly.

“We've lived in each other's pockets for a long time, eight years or so, and everybody has their own space now. We were touring for six years, we lived in London together, we lived in Germany for a time recording, and we were always in each other's face. We always lived together too, so it could be a bit much! I love those guys and I miss them, but I think it's great we have our own space. We really love rehearsing and playing more than ever before, because there is this sense of hanging out, it's like a family thing. Ben and Phil are playing in other bands, I'm playing bass in a band here in Sweden; it's these other projects that makes us enjoy The Datsuns all the more when we're back together.”

Death Rattle Boogie doesn't delve too far from its predecessors, but that has been The Datsuns' strength.

“On paper it probably sounds like our last record, or any of ours actually, but there's so much on there that we just couldn't have done ten years ago,” de Borst asserts. “When you see a band and they're young and ignorant of the whole 'rules' of how to play music, I really like that; when a band steps up and can't play their guitars properly, but their ideas are good, it's really exciting. You can't unlearn things though; when you've been on the road for so long, you want to do things a different way. I'd say our influences from the first record to now are exactly the same. Nevertheless, I didn't see the point of doing something exactly the same a second time. Each album is a capsule; we were different people then, we're different people now. A little more competent too, I hope.”

De de Borst muses that despite the brouhaha that surrounded them at the outset of their career, when critics plastered such erroneous labels as “saviours of rock” on their young shoulders, they didn't let it go to their heads.

“To a large extent we were super naive,” he concedes. “We were some dudes from a small town in New Zealand playing music that we really liked; I'd never even read NME before they were putting us on covers. There's this whole game being played where people into fashions are turned on to some genre of music; we didn't even know we were part of the game, and I quite like that naivety. But once we were in the middle of it, we got super-cynical about the whole thing, and we hated that; we always hated the musicians five or so years older than us, seething about their situation, angry and bitter about everything. We always found that so boring and clichéd, so when we found ourselves walking that path, so we made things simple – 'Do we like playing? Let's make records. Let's tour.' It became all about us, not anyone else, and that's why we're still here. That's how we came up with the name Death Rattle Boogie – we were living in London in 2005, where we'd been part of this thing and were no longer part of this thing, and Phil found the name in an old Commando comic, and it made us laugh. It was the best way to deal with it all.

“We also made sure we didn't hate each other,” de Borst laughs. “But we still love The Datsuns. When I make music alone it sounds nothing like The Datsuns, and that goes for everyone else. We've never been like, 'Oh I really like this record, we should make one like this', we just go with what happens when we get into a room together. We put ourselves into a box, but we tend to push against the sides a little, branch out some more each record. There are elements from the first record in this album, but there are always two or so tracks on each album where I think, 'Wow, where did that come from?' which I really like. We have never had a plan as such; it's always instinctive, it's just the shit we do when it's the four of us bashing things out.”

The Datsuns will be playing the following dates:

Wednesday 12 December - The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Thursday 13 December - Spotted Cow, Toowoomba QLD
Friday 14 December - Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast QLD
Saturday 15 December - Festival of the Sun, Port Macquarie NSW
Sunday 16 December - The Annandale, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 19 December - Karova Lounge, Ballarat VIC
Thursday 20 December - The Espy, Melbourne VIC
Friday 21 December - The Espy, Melbourne VIC